


Pretty Boy

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 04:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14229399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: Looks are everything. That's how Taemin's world works.





	Pretty Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is just me going off on a tangent, but re: Jonghyun’s fascination with Taemin’s androgyny…I always go back to the episode of Maknae Rebellion where they had the cross-dressing beauty contest. Taemin basically asked the judge not to pick him in the end, but Jonghyun was sooo disappointed when Taemin didn’t win. He looked like he was in total disbelief lol.

**2008**

 

Taemin looks in the mirror and a girl stares back at him.

It’s only him, in a wig and some cherry-flavored lip gloss. The others are the same, checked skirts and knee socks and long hair, but they’re all looking at him like he’s grown another head.

“Wow, Taeminnie,” Kibum begins, and then Jingi hyung reminds him, “Taeyeon,” and Kibum just leaves it. The heavy bathroom door swings shut behind him, and the breeze buffets Taemin’s skirt and tickles his legs, and it’s so strange. He feels naked without pants.

Minho lingers next to him, staring into their reflections. “I knew you’d look good, but…”

Jonghyun doesn’t say anything, but his eyes follow Taemin out of the room. Taemin can feel them.

They’re filming a skit for School of Rock, and Taemin is the heroine. He’s the most popular girl in school. Girls want to be him, boys are lining up to date him. The new girl wants to destroy him. That’s Kisoo hyung, the MC.

He hadn’t known this is how it would go when Manager Hyung loaded them into the van or even when he left them here in the hands of the PD, girls’ school after hours. None of them had, not until the staff sized them up and handed each of them a uniform, told them which bathroom they could use to change. That’s just how variety goes, Taemin is learning pretty quickly. And he can accept that, but adapting is something different. That’s harder.

It’s even worse this time because Taemin has extra scenes by himself and more lines than any of the others, and he doesn’t know who thought that was a good idea. He does his best, because that’s all he can do, and hopes it doesn’t show when he starts to shut down.

“Aigoo, how cute,” Kisoo hyung says every time they hit a break, petting Taemin’s head and smiling down at him. When he’s out of character he’s so nice Taemin keeps forgetting how scary he looks, blood red lipstick and miles of hairy leg, and Kisoo hyung doesn’t seem to care either.

The others are more self-conscious. Jingi hyung starts covering his mouth when he laughs and Kibum frets about his moustache, says he would’ve shaved again this afternoon if he’d known. Jonghyun plays it cool, slouching in his chair and toying with his wig, but as the night wears on he checks the clock more and more, like he’s worried school will open and they’ll get caught like this. Taemin wants to tell him this is going to be on TV, but Jonghyun isn’t that stupid.

And maybe being a girl feels more natural to Taemin than some of the stuff the production team asks him to do and say, but there’s no getting used to it. He starts closing his legs when he sits down without even thinking about it, squeezing his thighs together under the desk. His voice changes, too. He only realizes he’s doing it because the others are too, and then he’s just trying to keep his words as soft and light as theirs, but the crew has to tell him to speak up a couple times. He doesn’t know what to do with his face, how to walk, where to put his hands, but nothing he does is funny to anyone else. They all keep looking at him.

At one point a bunch of writer noonas surround him, “Let’s take a photo of you,” sit Taemin down at a desk and fuss over him and tell him to smile for them. He does. And then later a crew member teases Taemin, “Try calling me oppa, just once,” and before Taemin can even think Jonghyun is there, trilling, “Oppa~” with a toss of his fake hair, and then taking Taemin by the shoulders and steering him to the other end of the hallway. Jonghyun keeps a hand on him and stays close until Taemin has to film on his own again.

And Taemin is fine, he can handle it by himself, he has to. He’s going on twenty hours without sleep and he’s had to pee this whole time, practically, and he keeps forgetting his lines and wasting everyone’s time, and he wishes he could forget what he looks like right now, wishes everyone else would let him forget, but he’s fine.

He gets through it.

 

They get all the way out into the half-light, and then the chill morning air hits Taemin, sinks its teeth into his skin, and that’s it. He knows he won’t be able to hold it the whole car ride, he’s about to explode now.

“Why didn’t you go earlier?” Manager Hyung groans, then waves him on. “Go on, hurry, we’ll wait for you.”

Jonghyun catches up to him before he makes it back inside.

“You too, hyung?” Taemin asks.

“You’ll just get lost if you go by yourself, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun replies, and Taemin doesn’t realize Jonghyun was only returning his own smile until they’ve moved on and they’re already halfway up the stairs, and it’s still on his face.

Taemin feels weird using the girls’ bathroom, but the school staff’s are all locked and the male crew members have been coming in and out of this one all night. And anyway, Jonghyun doesn’t care, doesn’t make fun of him, just follows him inside, so Taemin decides he doesn’t either.

Jonghyun slumps against the wall and folds his arms across his chest, and looking at him makes Taemin tired. Their eyes meet for one brief second before Taemin shuts the stall door and lowers himself onto the toilet, waits and waits for release. It’s been so long Taemin feels like he’s reached the point of no return, maybe he’ll never be able to pee again, but they were filming non-stop and he was in a skirt. And now here he sits anyway, pants around his ankles, doing it like a girl.

“You’ve never done it before?” Jonghyun says. His voice is so sudden Taemin starts, and that’s what it takes, Taemin is going and going and going, and he forgets he’s supposed to reply until Jonghyun presses on, “Dressed as a girl, I mean.”

Taemin has no idea what to say to that. He really hasn’t. He’s heard it all before, he’s been called a girl, he’s been called all kinds of things, but he’s never seen it himself until now. And then, he doesn’t know why Jonghyun is asking, why he sounds so careful.

Taemin twists around to flush, tries, “Have you?” and it’s supposed to be funny but it comes out wrong, and his stomach opens up, and he doesn’t want to face Jonghyun, but he has to. He flushed.

Taemin gets all the way to the sink and hides behind the rush of water before he makes himself look, and Jonghyun is right where he left him, and then he’s saying, “Yeah, a few times, as a joke,” so easily that Taemin stares.

Jonghyun catches Taemin’s eyes right away. He bites his mouth down to nothing and raises his chin like he’s daring Taemin to react, but he doesn’t look away, no matter how much Taemin wishes he would. Taemin isn’t going to say anything. And he has nothing _to_ say, he doesn’t care, he was just surprised, so he keeps still, lets Jonghyun read his face. Even when Jonghyun figures him out he doesn’t relax, though, and Taemin doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.

Then Jonghyun comes out and says it. “It doesn’t have to be a joke when you do it. It doesn’t have to be anything. You’re so pretty.”

Taemin’s face heats up all on its own. Jonghyun is watching him so closely now.

“What, you don’t like it?” Jonghyun barely gives him a second before he switches to, “You don’t like me saying it?”

“It’s not that,” Taemin says. He thinks he might like it if it’s Jonghyun, maybe too much, the feeling uncurling in his stomach is telling him he does, and he badly wants to stop talking about it. Instead he finds himself saying, “I just, I don’t want people to see me that way. I want to be a man.”

“You are a man,” Jonghyun says simply, “and you’re really pretty.”

 

**2011**

 

Jonghyun is pissed. Taemin knows as much from his shoulders and jaw and the way he makes sure the bedroom door clicks shut behind him before he rounds on Taemin. And Taemin just waits for Jonghyun to tell him why, because that’s coming next.

“You took my cigarettes, didn’t you?”

Oh.

Taemin tries to keep his face blank, but Jonghyun takes one look at him and _knows._ Scowls, balls his hands into fists and then crosses his arms over his chest.

“You know they turn your fingers yellow? Your teeth and your gums, too. And your breath will smell. Your voice could change.”

Two cigarettes won’t do all that. Smoking for two years might, though, so Taemin just skips the part where he feels sorry for stealing and listens to Jonghyun, and says, “They’re your cigarettes, hyung. Why are you telling _me?”_

“You’re nineteen, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun snaps, eyes narrowing into angry slits. “Don’t try to act cool when you don’t even know what you’re doing. I can’t quit, and now you want to start?”

It looks like Jonghyun is going to say more but Taemin has already had enough. He had to get up for school today, and now he’s come home to this. He barely had five minutes to himself in between, five minutes off from his stupid life.

Taemin forces himself off his bed and he thinks that should be the hard part, he can get out, he’s faster than Jonghyun and Jonghyun never puts his hands on him anyway. But then Jonghyun makes a grab for him and he’s got his arms around Taemin’s middle, and he’s dragging him back, and everything goes red.

Taemin can’t fight Jonghyun off, he’s like a wall at Taemin’s back, so he plays dirty, stomps on Jonghyun’s foot and sinks his fingernails into his wrist and jerks his elbow back into Jonghyun’s stomach. Jonghyun grunts and pants and swears in Taemin’s ear, but he doesn’t let him go. Walks Taemin over to Jingi hyung’s bed and throws him onto it, then stands over him and stares him down, breathing hard.

Taemin gets right back up, and as Jonghyun pushes him down again, Taemin gets a hold on his shoulders and hooks a leg around the backs of his knees and brings him down with him. Wrenches a squawk out of Jonghyun, and out of nothing Taemin is this close to laughing, bright hot feeling burring under his skin. He doesn’t want to fight anymore but he also doesn’t want to stop, and he knows it’s okay when Jonghyun gets ahold of Taemin’s wrists and Taemin catches him not-smiling.

Taemin isn’t that easy. He squirms and struggles and kicks his legs out, winds them around Jonghyun’s waist and twists his body, trying to flip him over, but it’s impossible, and then something gives and Jonghyun collapses on top of him instead, crushing Taemin and lying between his legs.

And then everything stops the minute Taemin feels something pressing into his hip, and it’s Jonghyun’s dick.

Taemin doesn’t realize he’s freed Jonghyun until suddenly he’s gone, he’s hunched over on the edge of the bed and all Taemin has is his back.

Jonghyun is going to say it happens. He’s going to say it doesn’t mean anything. Taemin doesn’t need to hear it. First Jonghyun acted like Taemin doesn’t know smoking is ugly, now he’s going to act like Taemin doesn’t get awkward boners.

Jonghyun doesn’t say anything at all. His silence just tightens the knot in Taemin’s stomach.

 

A day later, Jonghyun is back to saying too much, and that doesn’t make anything any easier on Taemin. It doesn’t help at all, because lately every schedule is just another interview, and today is more of the same. Interview after interview after interview. Taemin already hates the person cameras turn him into, already hates acting cute and letting people play with him, but somehow the worst thing right now is doing it in front of Jonghyun.

“Which one of you is most popular in Japan so far?”

When they recorded “Replay” in Japanese, Taemin won back the lines SM took from him three years ago, but that’s about all he’s managed to do. He’s started taking Japanese classes with a tutor the company found him, but he forgets everything he’s learned when no one tells him what to say, and he’s expected to speak. It’s hard enough to reach people in Korea.

Still, Jonghyun says, “Taemin-goon is. He has a gentle image, they like that.”

Taemin doesn’t like it. He’s not feeling very gentle at the moment, either, especially when Jonghyun smiles so stupidly at him. Taemin ignores him.

“If you were a girl, which member would you date?”

Minho actually says Taemin, and no one ever picks him, so when it’s Taemin’s turn, he ignores Jonghyun’s stare and returns the favor, says, “Minho hyung,” and when pressed, “Because Flaming Charisma.”

Jonghyun chose himself, the way he always does. Taemin doesn’t know why Jonghyun gets to blow these questions off, when he always watches Taemin like a hawk, and then makes fun of him no matter what.

Like now, Jonghyun crows, “Oooooooh, we have a couple~” and when Taemin doesn’t crack, doesn’t give him a reaction, Jonghyun just laughs at him anyway, glues his eyes to Taemin’s face until Taemin’s ears betray him, tingle with heat.

“Who’s the manliest member?”

Taemin knows what’s coming.

And it’s Jonghyun again. “There’s only one choice,” he says, and the others exchange knowing looks, and sure enough, they all flash the same name card, yellow for, “Taeminnie~!”

Taemin went for Jingi hyung, because he wasn’t laughing like the rest of them, and Taemin can still look at him, and then there’s the real reason—he’s not Jonghyun. Jonghyun, who’s craning back to check on Taemin again, Jonghyun, whose face is twisting Taemin’s stomach tighter and tighter.

“Taemin-goon, you have more aegyo than the other members, right? Could you show us?”

Taemin could, but he’d rather die.

“Show us, Taemin-goon,” Jonghyun insists, reaching up to tickle Taemin’s side, and when Taemin flinches away from his hand he runs up against Jonghyun himself, solid and warm and there. “You know how cute you are.”

Taemin gets it over with. He scrunches his mouth and pokes his finger into his cheek, and Jonghyun half-smiles. Makes a kissy face, and Jonghyun can’t take it, has to watch Taemin through his fingers. Hides his smile behind his fists and widens his eyes, and Jonghyun falls back in his seat, holding onto Taemin’s arm for dear life.

“Aren’t you worried you won’t be able to find girlfriends prettier than you?”

And somehow that’s the dumbest question they’ve been asked all day. Taemin is beyond done, but he knows Jonghyun is looking at him. Again.

“Taemin-goon has that problem, the rest of us should be okay.”

 

When Taemin gets up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, Jonghyun isn’t in bed. Taemin doesn’t start to panic until he’s washing his hands, and then he figures it out before it gets bad.

Sure enough, he finds Jonghyun huddled in front of their building, hiding in plain sight with his cap pulled low over his eyes, cigarette glowing between his lips and smoke curling about his face.

“What are you doing out here?” Jonghyun hisses, and then he gets a hand between Taemin’s shoulder blades and pushes him into the alley between their building and the next. Taemin almost trips on the rough pavement and the dumpster stinks ferociously, but that’ll make Jonghyun suffer more than him, so Taemin can deal.

After that Jonghyun has nothing to say to him, just wants to smoke in peace. No one asked him to, but Taemin keeps lookout, peering into the empty street like Dispatch might be lurking in the darkness, and imagining what it would be like if the people that interviewed them today could see them now.

“I’m sorry I took your cigarettes, hyung,” Taemin says, because he’s beginning to feel like he should. “If I want to smoke I’ll get my own.”

“You don’t want to smoke, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun tells him, and this was nice for all of five minutes. Now Taemin is mad at him again, now that feeling is back, now he’s back to the part where there’s no right thing to do. Before he can even say anything, Jonghyun gets there first. “Don’t say it’s none of my business. You are my business.”

Taemin plucks the cigarette from between Jonghyun’s fingers and crushes it under his shoe, grinding it into the dirt.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

And then Jonghyun opens his mouth again, and Taemin grabs his face in his hands and covers it with his own.

For a few seconds he doesn’t realize what he’s done, and then Jonghyun is wrestling him away and air bursts into Taemin’s lungs, and he can think again, and he really really really doesn’t want to. Jonghyun has him by the shoulders and he’s looking Taemin right in the eye, and his face should be the scariest thing Taemin has ever seen, but he just looks like Jonghyun.

“Don’t do things you don’t mean, Taeminnie,” he says, strange and breathless. “Don’t do it to yourself, and don’t do it to me.”

Taemin wants to do it again, though. Maybe it’s crazy, maybe it’s sudden, maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s never wanted anything this badly in his whole life. He’s going to do it again.

He does. Jonghyun lets him, and then he pulls where he pushed, holds Taemin tight against his body, kisses him back, kisses him for real, takes Taemin places he never knew existed.

 

**2012**

 

Taemin went before they left the dorm, and they’ve only been waiting in this room for half an hour, but he already feels like he has to pee again. Nerves, probably.

“Who cares, just go already,” Kibum says. “We still have twenty minutes.”

Taemin was only checking if anyone needed to go too, he doesn’t need someone to come with him. He’s been on Music Bank thirty million times before, he knows where the bathrooms are. It totally won’t take him half the time left just to find them, he totally won’t get lost and have to ask someone.

It only takes him five minutes in the end, and it’s still early enough that most groups are just getting here, so there’s no one around, no line yet for the women’s room, even.

The bathroom is empty except for an ahjussi with a staff ID card hanging around his neck. When Taemin walks in, he glances up at him. Then his eyebrows fly up, perfect shocked face, and he jerks back, dribbling on the floor.

“This is the men’s room,” he stammers.

For one agonizing moment, Taemin can’t move, can’t speak, trapped in his body. When feeling starts to come back, he goes straight for the urinals like nothing happened, no one said anything, takes his dick out and does his business.

The staffer side-eyes him anxiously. Taemin can feel his look, and it shrinks his insides down to nothing, it makes Taemin feel like nothing. Then he hears him zip up, hears the tap run, and it’s over with. Taemin has the bathroom to himself.

He goes to wash his hands on autopilot, and then his hair falls forward like a curtain. He shakes it out of his eyes, tilts his head back to flip it over his shoulder, and catches sight of himself in the mirror.

It’s just him again.

Taemin has grown his hair out before. In fact, it was longer for Lucifer than it is right now, but that’s because this time, the coordi noonas convinced him to go with hair extensions instead. They let him try them out first, so Taemin wore them to practice a couple times, and enjoyed the way his hair moved with his body when he danced. The other members told him long hair suited him, and Jonghyun liked it, too. Even if he hadn’t said Taemin was beautiful a million times without anyone ever asking him, Taemin would have been able to tell he liked it. And then, the extensions take an extra thirty to forty minutes to put in each morning, but an early start has always been Manager Hyung’s policy, so the only real difference is that Taemin spends more time in hair and make up, and less time sitting around waiting. He gets to take them out at night, too.

No one told Taemin that hair extensions make him look like a girl.

He’s so stupid. His throat is squeezing shut and his face looks wrong. He stands there and watches and doesn’t deal with any of it, and rubs his hands raw with soap.

 

“What took you so long?”

Jonghyun.

Taemin doesn’t want to talk.

“You ran into someone,” Jonghyun guesses.

Ignoring him won’t work, so Taemin says, “I pooped, hyung.”

Jonghyun just smiles indulgently. He keeps at it until he runs out of things to say, and Taemin is almost out of ways to not answer him, and then leaves Taemin be.

And that’s what Taemin thought he wanted, but he feels worse, looking at Jonghyun with his hat over his face, trying to sleep for what little time they still have, and shutting Taemin and the rest of the world out.

Before he knows what he’s doing, Taemin’s reached out to shake his shoulder, and then he’s saying, “Hyung,” and Jonghyun is looking at him again.

“What?”

Taemin doesn’t know. He asks Jonghyun something stupid, something that’ll get him going, forgets what within a few seconds. Jonghyun does what Taemin wants, and talks and talks and talks until nothing could shut him up. And Taemin shouldn’t be taking advantage of Jonghyun’s nerves like this, he should let him rest, but Jonghyun’s voice and his eyes are the only things that don’t make Taemin feel like shit right now.

It doesn’t take long before Taemin starts to get greedy, and pushes. Nibbles on his lip, curls his fingers into Jonghyun’s shirt, finds Jonghyun’s foot with his own. Watches as each new thing he tries hits Jonghyun, changes Jonghyun’s face just that much, and feels every tiny detail build inside him. He can’t stop himself and Jonghyun keeps letting him get away with it, and pretty soon they reach a point where neither of them even know what Jonghyun is saying anymore, or how long they have left, just shy of real danger.

And then it’s time, and Taemin tells himself that he should leave Jonghyun alone now. They both have things they have to do, and Taemin can move on now, leave behind the person he saw in the mirror and focus on doing his best today.

“Sherlock” kicks in and Taemin moves and he forgets everything. He’s fine.

 

Taemin dances for three minutes, and then goes back to Jonghyun for the rest of the day. The worse things get, the more Taemin needs Jonghyun, and the more Taemin uses him, the more he wants Jonghyun to need him, too.

He does all kinds of things.

When they pile into the van and Jonghyun sits in back with him the way he always does, Taemin almost wants to climb into his lap. He links his leg with Jonghyun’s and holds his hand instead.

When they seize on a gap between schedules and stop for udon, Taemin’s hair gets in the way, almost gets in his soup, and he asks Jonghyun to tie it back for him. Leans into it when Jonghyun combs his fingers through and gathers it up in his fist.

When they guest on a radio show, Taemin rolls his chair right next to Jonghyun’s and puts his hand on Jonghyun’s knee under the table, then gets brave and slides it up his thigh, and keeps it there.

When they finally get out of hair and make up, climb into their own clothes, and Manager Hyung drives them home, Taemin leans into Jonghyun’s side and lays his head on his shoulder and doesn’t even pretend to sleep.

And when they get home, Taemin leaves Jonghyun alone in their room and goes to take a shower, and does everything he would do if he weren’t waiting.

He’s half hard already, but he doesn’t touch himself, and the feeling lingers, deepens, aches. He washes his hair instead, trying to get used to how much less of it he has to work with all of the sudden. His head feels light.

The door opens while he’s soaping up his arms and chest, and then the lock clicks and Taemin _knows._ He looks anyway, and meets Jonghyun’s eyes. Holds them until Jonghyun’s all the way naked and Taemin gets distracted by the rest of him, and then it doesn’t matter, because Jonghyun is right there, crowding Taemin against the wall of the shower, and Taemin has to kiss him.

They kiss and kiss and kiss and somehow it’s never enough, not even when Taemin is seeing stars, sucking on Jonghyun’s tongue instead of breathing, and doing everything he can to drive Jonghyun crazy. Moaning into Jonghyun’s mouth, pulling his hair and raking his fingernails down Jonghyun’s back, hooking a leg around Jonghyun’s waist and trying to trap him, bring him closer somehow, and he doesn’t know if he wants to rub off on Jonghyun’s abs until he comes, or let Jonghyun fuck him into the wall. Then Jonghyun gets his hands on Taemin’s ass and squeezes, hard, grinding into Taemin and panting against his lips, and Taemin wants everything. He wants Jonghyun’s dick.

Jonghyun turns Taemin in his arms and gives him his fingers instead, takes his time and gets up to three before the burn makes Taemin so desperate he can taste it, and he would do anything, _anything._

“Please, hyung,” not even sure how he can talk.

“Is this what you needed, is this what you were thinking of?”

Jonghyun sounds almost unsure, but then he twists his fingers, presses deeper and touches something inside Taemin that makes him forget everything up till now.

“Fuck me.”

Jonghyun’s dick splits him open. It’s too much, too big, and Taemin can take it. His body fights him, his heart pounds and his legs shake and he has to bite his arm so he doesn’t cry out, but he takes it.

Jonghyun takes Taemin’s hands in his own, threads their fingers together and braces them both against the wall, breathes with him. Taemin gets there first, pushing back against him and clenching down, fills himself up with Jonghyun until there’s nothing else inside him, and he can no longer tell the pain from the pleasure.

Jonghyun whimpers into his shoulder, and then he pulls out, leaves Taemin empty and wanting, and does it to him again. And again. Again again again, finds that white hot place inside Taemin and fucks him harder and faster, tongues Taemin’s mouth and bites his neck and tells him, hot and breathless in his ear, “Only me, no one else gets to see you like this,” and Taemin takes it all. He wants more, and he gets it.

Before Taemin’s ready, Jonghyun starts to lose it, snapping his hips and kissing him clumsily, moans loudly and then he’s coming and coming inside Taemin, hot and wet, and then he takes Taemin in his hand and that’s it. Taemin’s whole world disappears.

 

Later, much later, when they’re in bed and it’s too dark to really see anything, Jonghyun asks him.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

And that doesn’t surprise Taemin, because Jonghyun always knows. But he surprises himself. He talks.

By morning, it’s funny. He can tell Kibum and Minho and Jingi hyung what happened. And then it’s just fodder for variety shows, and that’s okay, too. Somehow Jonghyun made it okay.

Taemin can look at himself again.

 

**2014**

 

“Hyung, do you think I should start working out?”

Jonghyun gives him a look, and Taemin thinks it means _don’t talk to me._ It could be for a lot of things. He could be annoyed with Taemin, or he could be annoyed at the whole world. He’s probably just tired. Their flight got delayed and they’ve been at the Shanghai airport for three hours already, and it’s only eight in the morning now. They didn’t sleep last night, either. First there was the concert, and then they got back to the hotel and kept each other up. Jonghyun wanted to fuck him, and Taemin honestly wanted it too, but he made do with his mouth and hands. He has to sit all day today.

“What, do you want to do a sexy concept?” Jonghyun says, long after Taemin gave up on getting an answer. “Or is that what SM wants?”

“I don’t think they want to change my image, I think they’re counting on the fans I already have.”

Jonghyun’s expression shifts ever so slightly. “Do you want to change?”

For the second time in his life, Taemin is debuting. This time he’s doing it alone. He has no idea what to expect yet, no idea how this process works, how far SM will let him go, but that’s not the most important thing right now. His music has no voice and no face, and that comes first. He has to put the right foot forward.

“Don’t you think I need to?” Taemin says. He hates that he keeps turning everything into a question, like Jonghyun should know better than him, when it’s Taemin’s life. But still. “I can’t hide behind you guys anymore, and I’m not sure I’m strong enough to do everything on my own.”

“You don’t think you’re man enough, you mean.”

Jonghyun always gets right to the point. It’s one of the reasons why Taemin loves him so much, but right now he wants to hate him for it pretty badly.

Taemin tries to smile and it feels wrong, and he knows Jonghyun will be able to tell, but he still keeps his voice light when he admits, “That, too.”

“See, here’s my thing,” Jonghyun says, almost before Taemin can get the words out, like he was just waiting to see if Taemin is still talking, “women are stronger than men.”

“I’m not a woman, hyung.” That’s that, but Jonghyun just gives him a slow, dirty smile, because he knows that better than anyone, he had Taemin’s dick down his throat maybe five hours ago. Taemin needs a minute before he can think again, and that gets him nowhere. “And isn’t it more like, some women are stronger than some men?”

“Okay, but what I mean is, if something’s feminine, or it seems feminine, people always act like it’s weak. If a guy cares about something, if he lets anything in, if he has feelings, then he loses. It’s weakness.” That makes more sense, but Taemin still doesn’t know what this has to do with him. Maybe Jonghyun figures it’s obvious. He just presses his point, continues, “But why is strength ignorance? Pretending you don’t know what’s going on, pretending there’s nothing going on inside you. And okay, working on yourself is one thing, but why is it strength to pretend you’re somebody you’re not?”

And then Jonghyun stops, and Taemin knows what he wants, so he looks him in the eye. Jonghyun gets this look on his face, like he’s about to smile and he’s trying not to. Taemin wants to see it, even if he’s not sure how to take that. Just, Jonghyun wouldn’t laugh at him.

Then Jonghyun says, “I think facing yourself, and being honest with yourself, is much cooler.”

And Taemin finally gets it. He just doesn’t know how Jonghyun expects him to react.

“That’s how you see me?”

“Sure, you’re a real man,” Jonghyun replies easily. Then he catches the look on Taemin’s face, protests, “I’m serious.”

“Hyung, don’t.” It trips out of him so quickly, before Taemin can stop himself, and then he doesn’t bother. “I don’t need you to say stuff like that.”

Taemin wants to be done, but Jonghyun stares him down, and Taemin can’t look away. He has nowhere to hide, anyway. He doesn’t have to pee and they already ate and if he goes for coffee or a smoke, Jonghyun will just come with him. And they’re having this conversation at some point whether he likes it or not, that’s kind of how it goes. Now is always better. Jonghyun reads him like a book, and as soon as Taemin is ready, he picks up right where he left off.

“You take responsibility for yourself, and you don’t play games. You know who you are, and what you want to do, and you put everything you have into it. You don’t let anyone stop you, either.”

And then it’s like Jonghyun’s run out of things to say, and he just looks at Taemin, like he wants his help, and Taemin doesn’t get it. He has nothing to do with the Taemin in Jonghyun’s head.

Eventually Jonghyun says, “What, that’s not how you see yourself?”

Taemin can’t answer right away. He’s never had much time to think about himself, and that’s only making him feel stupid now. It takes enough out of him just to live his life and try to do it his way, and ignore all the things people say about him, but then, maybe that’s what Jonghyun is talking about. Maybe he just doesn’t realize Taemin is always doing things just to do them, or because he has to do _something,_ and that’s as far as he ever gets. Maybe Jonghyun assumes they’re the same, that Taemin puts as much thought into everything as Jonghyun does.

“Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing, or how I feel about it,” Taemin tells him finally, but as soon as his words write themselves onto Jonghyun’s face, crimped brow, tight mouth, he knows he’s going to have to say more, because that isn’t right. That isn’t everything. “Or more like, I don’t understand any of it? Like I don’t understand myself. And then it’s like I’m no better than all the people who think they know me, when they only see what they want. Like, I have to look at myself from the outside in, because it’s too confusing to go from the inside out.”

Like, like, like. Jonghyun threads his fingers through Taemin’s hair, pulling slightly as he shakes Taemin’s head, as if he’s trying to clear it. “Taemin-ah, you’re not making any sense. Try again?”

Taemin is starting to get frustrated, and at the same time he almost wants to laugh. He’s not going to, though, he’s going to sit tight and figure this out.

“Ummmmm,” and he’s off to a great start, and maybe that’s the best he can do, but, “I don’t know if I’m the person everyone else sees when they look at me, but at the same time, I don’t know that I’m not.”

“Your image and your identity feed off each other, and sometimes you don’t know which is which,” Jonghyun says, and it’s this close to being a question.

But Taemin thinks Jonghyun got there first the way he always does, and that’s it. That’s what Taemin was going for.

Kind of. Maybe. Not quite.

And then it comes to him, in one of those rare moments of clarity Taemin never has. It feels totally out of place here. There’s a baby crying and it’s going to be on their flight, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows is wearing Taemin thin, and Jonghyun looks even worse than Taemin feels, pale and puffy-eyed and swallowed up in his hoodie.

“I’ve never had a say,” Taemin tells Jonghyun, and he doesn’t know how to make it sound as important as it feels to him right now. “I’ve never had a chance to own any of it, not my appearance, not my image, not my career. I want to have my say.”

 

That’s as far as Taemin gets with Jonghyun until they’re an hour into their flight, two hours and two billion years left to go. Kibum is snoring on one side of Taemin, cheek smushed against the shuttered window, but neither of the two of them has ever been able to sleep on planes. As soon as they take off Jonghyun leaves Taemin behind and puts his headphones on, flipping through songs in tinny bursts and playing with his phone, foot jittering alongside Taemin’s. Whenever Jonghyun’s boredom reaches flashpoint, though, his eyes find Taemin, there and gone. It takes Taemin forever to realize he’s actually supposed to notice, and longer to catch Jonghyun at it.

Then Taemin gets smart, just stares at Jonghyun until he looks up. _“What,_ hyung?”

“What do you want to say?”

“Huh?”

“You said you had things to say, and I said I would write you something,” Jonghyun reminds him. When Taemin told him he was going solo, Jonghyun promised that all his ideas were Taemin’s too, compositions, lyrics, whatever, all Taemin had to do was ask. Jonghyun smiles, bumps Taemin with his shoulder. “Use me, I’m good with words.”

Taemin thinks about it.

“You already know everything. You know how it is,” he says finally.

No one’s ever called Jonghyun a girl, but they’ve said other things. Lots of them. That he’s too short. That his skin is too dark. That he’s had plastic surgery. And then there’s the really bad stuff, from the time ILBE declared war on Jonghyun. It still makes Taemin feel sick, half a year later.

But Jonghyun is here right now, he’s fine, he’s shaking his head at Taemin. “I need you to say it, Taeminnie. Say it to me first, and I’ll help you with the hard part.”

And then he gives Taemin a stupid smile, the one that makes his eyes crinkle up into half-moons, the one Taemin has never figured out how to resist, the one that always ends up on Taemin’s face, too.

“Then…I’m more than just my face?” Taemin says. It sounds so lame, a total cliché, but really, that’s where his problems begin and where they end. “I was born looking this way, and I’ve lived looking this way, but there’s a lot about me you can’t see. There are a lot of different sides to me, I’m complicated.”

“Yes, you’re very complicated. What else?”

“I think that’s it?” And there’s really nothing, but Jonghyun isn’t going to say anything, not yet, he’s being mean and waiting Taemin out, and so Taemin circles back for what feels like the tenth time today, finds a new way to say the same thing. “Just…People can think what they want about me, they can get me wrong, but that’s not my problem. I want to think for myself, and be myself, whatever that means, and make my own mistakes. And I don’t want to apologize for any of that.”

“You want to be human, in other words?” Jonghyun says, and he hides his smile behind his fist, worst kept secret ever. Taemin sees right through him. “The Taemin I know is a fairy, though~”

“Hyung.”

“I’m sorry, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun says, immediately sobering up, 180 degree turn that leaves Taemin dizzy.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Taemin manages, even though he doesn’t think he should have to say it.

Jonghyun doesn’t listen to him, anyway, just tortures himself instead, chewing on his lip and squinting into Taemin’s face, like it hurts to look at him, and suddenly Taemin doesn’t get what’s going on, not at all, until Jonghyun says, “Do you think I’m one of those people?”

And then Taemin doesn’t want to understand. He’s not going to answer that.

“I just, I look at you, and I see _you._ The person you are, the way you look, it’s all the same thing for me. I can’t separate it out and I’m sorry,” Jonghyun confesses, almost tripping over his words in his rush to get it out there. Like he’s done Taemin wrong, like he can’t live with himself without saying something. “I can’t tell you that I love you for you, and not for your face or your body.”

And now he’s not even looking at Taemin, and Taemin is just living from one snore of Kibum’s to the next, because Jonghyun is being so embarrassing Taemin is having trouble sitting through it. And then Jonghyun risks a glance at his face, says, “You can hate me, Taeminnie, you probably do,” and that’s it, Taemin is either going to laugh or explode, or maybe neither. He just does not care anymore.

“It’s my face and my body, hyung. I know I’m pretty. I’m not sorry about it, either.” Taemin reaches up and tips Jonghyun’s chin towards him, so he doesn’t miss anything when Taemin says, “You think I don’t look at you? Because I do.”

Jonghyun blinks, swallows, and when Taemin lets him go he stays put. Says, “Look all you want, I’m okay with that.”

“So am I, if it’s you,” Taemin says back, and he tries to say it again, and again, and again, staring into Jonghyun’s face, letting Jonghyun’s eyes have all of him, his lips, his hair, his neck, his legs, whatever Jonghyun wants.

And Taemin thought Jonghyun looked terrible earlier, but he wants to take that back. Jonghyun looks so good right now, and he just looks better the more time Taemin takes with him. Taemin wants to look at him forever, never get off this stupid plane. Middle seat, no leg room, twenty hours without sleep, forty hours without sleep, airplane food, he could do it, as long as he could watch Jonghyun talk, hear his voice, feel his thigh pressed to his own. Maybe hold his hand or something.

There’s a problem with that. Taemin is getting a boner. And Kibum is asleep but he’s right there, and the flight attendant will come by again in a while, and Jonghyun won’t even do anything about it if he finds out. He probably already has. He’s probably getting hard, too, and he’s not doing anything.

Taemin widens his eyes at Jonghyun, pleading. Jonghyun tilts his head, _what,_ and then he gives himself away, smirks. Gives Taemin something to work with. He slips his hand onto Jonghyun’s thigh, draws a line, feels Jonghyun’s muscles jump at his fingertip, hears his breathing hiss. _Five minutes._ And then he gets up and wriggles past Jonghyun, ass in his face, steps into the bathroom and counts to sixty.

Jonghyun is there before he hits forty-five.

 

**2016**

 

The same company that put Taemin in hair extensions and marketed him as an angel and a fairy prince is sending him to the gym now. The only difference is four years and an updated business model. It’s Taemin’s first solo LP, and SM finally said it.

“You’re coming back as a man this time.”

Those are words Taemin has waited to hear since he was sixteen and SM told him to put his head down and act cute, but in the end all they really meant was, _you’re going to look the part._

Taemin knows the drill. He grew up idolizing Rain and Se7en, and even if he’s never going to look like them, he doesn’t think he can stay the way he is forever, either. He’s been SM’s baby and Shinee’s maknae for eight years, and now he has seven left before he has to enlist. He wants to spend them as Taemin, and this is the only way he knows to do that.

And so here he is. Jonghyun recommended this place. It’s in the heart of Gangnam, and it’s worth the membership price because everyone here is too stuck up to admit it even if they do recognize him. Plus the bathrooms are nice, way nicer than the ones at home.

He’d like it if Jonghyun were here, too, but their schedules are too different right now, and Taemin would rather not spend the time they do have together lifting weights. And anyway, if Jonghyun _were_ here, he’d take it all so seriously that Taemin would have to put all his energy into keeping his laughter inside, while it drained the strength out of his arms. Jonghyun would probably pick on Taemin’s technique, too. Whatever. Taemin is doing what he has to do.

And he’s doing it, but he really needs to make a new playlist, because he’s heard every song on this one so many times it’s like white noise, and it doesn’t take him anywhere anymore. There’s no world outside the windows, either, only city lights, red traffic and yellow buildings. It’s been five minutes and Taemin is back to wanting Jonghyun.

It’s just, when he’s alone like this he can’t forget that he hates getting hot and sweaty and trying to control his breathing, or that he hates each machine a little more than the last, and he hates crunches even more. What he hates the most, though, will come after, when he gets out of the shower and examines himself in the mirror, avoiding his own eyes and trying to look at his body in parts. Like he doesn’t know how it all works, how it feels under his skin. Like it doesn’t hurt when he pokes his own stomach, pinches the fat in his arm. Like he doesn’t feel stupid, flexing his muscles to confirm they even exist, that he’s not going through all this for nothing.

Tonight he really, really doesn’t want to do it. He weighed himself yesterday and somehow he’s going down instead of up, and despite everything, he’s realizing that he’s never really hated his body until now. It’s never been great, he knows he’s too skinny, and for a long time he even had to fight to show skin. And it’s never been entirely his, either, in all the same ways his face has never been his.

Still, his body has always done whatever he needed it to. Now it’s not listening to him at all.

He’s so gross when he finishes his last set that it’s easy to get himself into the shower, and that’s halfway already. The mirror is right outside, he won’t be able to avoid it.

What he doesn’t count on is his phone buzzing its way out of the folds of his clothes and onto the floor just as he steps out. It’s not broken, so he picks up, shimmying into his briefs one-handed because he can’t talk naked.

It’s Jonghyun.

“Where are you?” And he doesn’t even wait for Taemin to answer, blusters on, “Come pick me up. Manager Hyung gave me a ride, and then he ditched me here and went home by himself. Who does that?”

Not Jonghyun’s manager, Taemin knows that much, not unless Jonghyun told him to go ahead. The last time Taemin visited Blue Night, he stuck around until two and took them both home.

Jonghyun isn’t even trying to be believable, but he’s never learned how to ask Taemin for things, either.

Taemin makes him wait, then says, “I don’t know, I’m pretty tired. Can’t you call for a taxi?” and hopes Jonghyun can’t hear his smile.

“Take responsibility for me, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun says immediately, dropping all pretense, and Taemin knows he’ll beg if he thinks Taemin wants him to. Then, as if he’s just thought of it, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

Jonghyun’s voice goes straight to his dick, but Taemin plays dumb. “Food?”

“I don’t want food. You won’t, either.”

The Taemin in the mirror can wait until tomorrow.

 

Taemin takes it slow. He has to make it last.

Jonghyun is so hot and tight, clenching around him. When Taemin begins to move, their breathing hitches, and then Taemin shifts, angles himself, finds that spot, and Jonghyun gets loud. Gasps, moans. Talks. Meets Taemin’s hips with each thrust and hooks a leg around Taemin’s waist, hair rasping against Taemin’s skin and heel digging into his ass, taking him deeper, trying to hold him there, and it takes everything Taemin has to keep it together, keep giving Jonghyun what he needs.

Slow, slow.

Jonghyun’s knuckles brush Taemin’s stomach as he jerks himself off, until Taemin gets down on one elbow and takes over, Jonghyun’s dick hot and thick in his hand. And he won’t let Taemin kiss him, but that’s only because he wants to _look,_ pressing his thumb into Taemin’s lips and staring up at his face. Taemin feels Jonghyun’s eyes with his whole body, burning him up everywhere, and when Taemin finally meets them, they’re so dark Taemin forgets himself.

“You’re so beautiful,” each word punched out of Jonghyun as Taemin gets sloppy, just fucks and fucks and fucks into him, too hot to breathe, “so beautiful.”

And then it’s too much. Taemin comes, and Jonghyun follows him.

Taemin goes into the bathroom to fetch a washcloth, then wipes Jonghyun’s come off his stomach as gently as he can, lingering, feeling him breathe beneath his hands. Jonghyun gets bored before Taemin does, pulling him back down onto the bed and gathering him into his arms.

Taemin is fine with that. Jonghyun’s face is right there, hair wrecked, lips red and swollen, now curling into a lazy smile. He loses track of time, until Jonghyun closes the distance again, nudges Taemin’s nose with his own, bites his mouth open and flirts with Taemin’s tongue, makes his toes curl.

It’s all too soon. Taemin breaks away and rolls onto his back, and that doesn’t help all that much, because Jonghyun presses himself to Taemin’s side and gets up on his elbow, and then he’s all Taemin can see again.

“Were you at the gym when I called?” Jonghyun asks suddenly.

“Mm.” Jonghyun’s hair keeps falling into his eyes, and Taemin has to fix that, has to reach up and comb it back, over and over. “Can you tell I’ve been going, can you see my abs?”

The next second he wishes he hadn’t said anything, nerves trilling, but he’s safe. Jonghyun isn’t looking at his face anymore, and then he’s slid his hand down, fingers spanning across Taemin’s stomach, warm and comfortable.

“Uh huh, they’re sexy,” Jonghyun tells him, and whatever. Taemin will just go ahead and believe him, even when Jonghyun smirks and pinches Taemin’s navel. Even when Jonghyun’s looked his fill and flopped down onto his back next to Taemin, even when Taemin turns towards him and tries to wait. For Jonghyun to do something else to him, for Jonghyun to say something else to him, anything at all.

“Hyung,” Taemin says suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“Why do you like me?”

“I can’t help it, just look at you,” Jonghyun replies, so easily, and then something about Taemin’s expression makes him try again. “Do I need a reason?”

“Yeah, I want to hear it.” Taemin pouts to hide that his face has gone a little weird, and anyway that always makes Jonghyun a little crazy, always makes him talk. “Whatever it is, you always say cheesy things so I’ll stop asking. Don’t think I don’t know.”

Jonghyun goes quiet, and for several painful breaths Taemin is terrified he’s said something wrong, before Jonghyun comes back with, “Then why do you like me?”

Jonghyun probably doesn’t think Taemin can answer that. He probably doesn’t realize that he could have asked Taemin years ago, and Taemin could have told him, “Because you liked me first,” but Taemin is saying it now. He doesn’t even have to look for the words, because it’s all right there. Jonghyun is right there.

And then there’s more.

“Even when I hate myself, you still like me,” and, “You make me happy,” and finally, the thing he wants to say most, “I’ve never looked at anyone else but you.”

Taemin barely finishes before Jonghyun is kissing him breathless, and in seconds Taemin is this close to forgetting everything.

But Taemin wants something more, something he can keep when this moment is over and they’ve left this room and forgotten what day and which hotel this was. He takes Jonghyun’s face in his hands and keeps him there, pulls away.

“It’s your turn to tell me, hyung.”

Their eyes meet while Jonghyun thinks about it.

“I can’t get enough of you, that’s why. There’s no hating you, so I don’t have a choice. I’ll just like you more and more,” Jonghyun says at last. He brushes his fingers across Taemin’s cheek. “You can change, and the way I see you won’t.”

Taemin doesn’t know he’s smiling until Jonghyun’s face changes, until Jonghyun’s eyes soften and his mouth crooks and lips press together, and then slowly, slowly, he smiles back.

“Twenty minutes,” is all Jonghyun says. “Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll want you again.”

Taemin wants Jonghyun again right now. He shows Jonghyun how much, every way he can think of, and in the end there’s no waiting.

 

**2017**

 

SM is rushing Taemin’s comeback. It’s already September when they tell him that they’re shooting for an October release. They don’t tell him why, and they don’t listen very politely when he questions their process, and at the end of the day they don’t give him any time to think. It’s a good thing he doesn’t need any, because he started thinking years ago.

He doesn’t care what the company tells him this time, he chooses the song he wants and he sticks with it until they give in, the way Jonghyun has always done. He doesn’t even have to fight that hard for “Move” in the end, because it’s not hard to see where he’s coming from, and they were the ones who showed it to him first.

“Move” itself isn’t the point, anyway. Sugawara Koharu is.

He first found her on Youtube, bingeing her choreography videos with his computer perched in his lap and Jonghyun’s foot climbing up his back. When Jonghyun finally gave up and crawled across the bed to see what was more interesting than him, he saw the same thing Taemin saw.

A way for Taemin to be himself.

Because after all this time, Taemin is comfortable in his own skin, and it’s made him greedy.

Another time, Taemin said to Jonghyun, “You used to say all the time that I was prettier than a girl.”

“I can start saying it again if you want?” Jonghyun replied carefully. “I still think so. If you want to hear it, I can say it.”

“I don’t know. These days you keep saying I’m a real man, I might like that better,” Taemin went on, and tried not to laugh at the trapped look on Jonghyun’s face.

And then Jonghyun stopped looking for a way out, and said it.

“Why can’t you be both?”

That’s where Sugawara Koharu comes in.

She’s worked with both male and female artists, and her style doesn’t change for either. It works for both. If Taemin gives her “Move,” she’ll give him exactly what he wants, and let him go right down the middle.

 

SM goes for it, and she does too. Taemin is on his way.

  

So that happens, and all Taemin can think is that he wants to brag to Jonghyun. He wants to see his face when he tells him. He wants to hug him so tight Jonghyun’s ribs will crack. He wants Jonghyun to buy him food, and then take him somewhere they can be alone, and then Taemin could let Jonghyun have anything he wants and Taemin could give him.

It’s just, he wouldn’t have come this far without Jonghyun. He wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. Without him, he would have stayed scared. He would have stayed angry. He would have stayed confused. He would have stayed blind. He would have hated himself through all of it.

He would never have tried to see the Taemin that Jonghyun sees. He wouldn’t have even known to look.

He has all those thoughts, and when he does see Jonghyun again, only a few hours later, all he can get out is, “Hyung.”

Jonghyun just pets his head, gives him a smile. “What, Taemin-ah?”

And then he waits for Taemin.

“Thank you,” Taemin says, and it’s only two words, and he wishes he could say it a million times, but that’s everything.

**Author's Note:**

> So somehow I wrote 9000 words without anyone eating anything. Instead, half the fic takes place in the bathroom. lol idk.


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